Alice Fulton, the judge for the 1998 Walt Whitman Award, calls Once
I Gazed at You in Wonder ""quite simply, the most endearing book
I've read in some time."" Readers of this audacious and, yes,
endearing collection will agree. Jan Heller Levi has said that her
poems are not confessions but conversations. Here, then, are her
conversations with the world. What sets Levi apart, however, is
that she lets the world answer back. Difficult fathers, ineffectual
mothers are forgiven; ex-lovers are blessed. Sophisticated but
never jaded, this poet looks in wonder beyond the self: a cup of
coffee in one of New York's ubiquitous Greek diners can launch Levi
into a meditation on truth versus compassion; a suite of elegies
for her mother takes us from a hospital corridor to the studio of a
television talk show where God is the guest; a poetry reading in
which she shares the stage with a folk singer illustrates Levi's
gift for illuminating the absurd textures of late-twentieth-century
existence. Don't you have any happy poems? he wondered. Don't you
have any cancer songs? I asked. With the narrative drive of great
fiction, the consolations of philosophy, and the rigor of art, Once
I Gazed at You in Wonder marks the entrance of a much-needed new
voice and vision in the conversation that is American poetry.
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